Of the energy consumed by the entire building facilities in offices, residences, and others, the air conditioning-related energy consumption accounts for about a half of that, and thus promoting the air conditioning-related energy saving contributes significantly to the energy saving of the building facilities. Consequently, an air-conditioning and heat source system is required to efficiently operate in accordance with the usage of a room. For the implementation of that, real-time thermal load estimation for the room needs to be achieved. To date, in terms of air conditioning-related energy saving, numerous thermal load estimating devices have been developed, including, for example, one that prepares a standard thermal load pattern in advance and estimates the thermal load.
Such conventional techniques, however, prepare thermal load patterns for a target building in advance to estimate the thermal load and cannot estimate momentarily varying thermal load of the target building in real time.
An object of the present invention is to provide a thermal load estimating device and an air conditioning control system that are capable of estimating a thermal load in units of a room in real time.
According to an embodiment, a thermal load estimating device receives actual power consumption of various types of devices installed in a room, a thermal load pattern of a time-series maximum thermal load of the room, and power consumption of the various types of devices in the room; estimates a thermal load of the room at appropriate time based on the actual power consumption, the thermal load pattern, and the power consumption; and outputs an estimated thermal-load value as a result of estimation.